The validity of movie rating systems

I hope everyone knows you can’t trust any statistics someone gives you if they’re trying to sell you something. Whether it’s the criminally inaccurate graphs that frequent a FOX News story or “4 out of 5 dentists” recommend Brand X toothpaste. Numbers don’t lie, but people… They lie all the time by manipulating those numbers.

The blog FiveThirtyEight recently exposed how Fandango’s movie ratings are skewed compared to everyone else’s ratings. The highlights of the FiveThirtyEight article is that Fandango rounds their ratings up to the nearest half-star. So a movie with 4.01 stars becomes a 4.5, and so on. The primary difference between Fandango and everyone else is that Fandango is trying to sell you a movie ticket. Something to keep in mind.

I’ve done my own movie rating analysis of movie franchises using numbers from IMDb and RottenTomatoes. Taking into account hundreds of movies there is remarkable agreement between the two rating systems.

The World’s Most Indispensable Movie App

The RunPee app tells you the best times to
run & pee during a movie
so you don't miss the best scenes.

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I don’t think it’s any surprise that critics score movies lower on average. I think it’s part of the job description for being a movie critic. 🙂

Here at RunPee we have our own movie rating system: The Peeple’s Poll. Our poll is only about 2 years old so we have far less data than the others, but we make up for it in accuracy. We give you not only the overall rating of a movie but also break it down by your gender and age group.

We’re just getting started

In case you didn’t know my wife and I are in the process of rebuilding the RunPee app from scratch using a new programming language/framework: Google Flutter. In the process we’re refining the movie rating system and will apply machine learning algorithms to the data so that we can suggest new movies to you that you haven’t seen. This isn’t much different than what NetFlix does, except we’ll do it for recent releases so you can better decide which movies to see in the theater and which to wait for the DVD/Netflix.

What people are saying
about the RunPee app.

Korpo53, 06/07/2022

Must have app if you love the movies

If you’re like me and enjoy a 92oz soda as part of the movie experience, you’ll be thankful for this app telling you the best times to go for a quick break. Whether that’s to refill your soda or recycle it.

Possibly an even better feature is the info on if the movie has after credits scenes. There’s nothing worse than sitting there reading about who the key grip was, then finding out that’s all you did. I blame Marvel for the stupid trend.

Seriously, I see a dozen movies a month and use this app every single time. Worth every Penny of the infinity coin thing I bought.

Developers note: the RunPee app is now, and always will be, 100% free. Donations are optional.

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